


Always Keep Fighting

by Gomeni



Category: Supernatural
Genre: African Dream Root, And many other fandom cliches, Gen, Kevin Tran gets hit with a clue-by-four, Mental Health Issues, Sam Winchester's Terrible Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-28 22:55:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21399985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gomeni/pseuds/Gomeni
Summary: Set between 9x06 Heaven Can't Wait and 9x07 Bad Boys.Sam mysteriously falls unconscious, and the only one who can help is Kevin... and as it turns out, Sam himself.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	Always Keep Fighting

**Author's Note:**

> I'm dedicating this piece to my brother who committed suicide two years ago today, and all the people who've been there themselves, or known someone who has.
> 
> As background, this story began as a way for Kevin to find out that though his life sucks, Sam's (and Dean's) lives are infinitely worse. But as I was writing it, I found it becoming a bit more of a character study on Sam himself and all the crap he's been through and his tendency to still maintain hope in the face of all of it. So while this has become a piece about depression, I hope it's also (at least a little bit) about hope too.
> 
> The title is a reference to Jared Padalecki's campaign for mental health, the monster is inspired by one of J.K. Rowling's and her own difficulties with mental illness.  
The soundtrack I had while writing it was:  
\- Gang of Youths: their two studio albums, The Positions and Go Farther in Lightness with special mentions for Magnolia, Knuckles White Dry and The Overpass on the former, and the title song and The Frankest of Shadows and Deepest of Sighs on the latter.  
\- Novo Amor - Carry You  
\- Biffy Clyro - Machines  
\- Three Doors Down - Pages (Acoustic)  
\- Switchfoot's Hope Is The Anthem
> 
> I'm working on the second part now, and this is all very raw and unedited, so comments and feedback are very welcome. I hope you get as much out of reading it as I did writing it.

~*For Alex*~

Kevin knew from experience that Sam was a quiet housemate at the best of times, but this was taking it to extremes. It had been two days since Crowley had finally agreed to the translation, so things had been quiet in that quarter. Sam had retreated to his room not long afterwards, and Kevin hadn’t seen him again since. Dean wasn’t due back for another few days, having gotten caught up in a salt and burn on his way back from Idaho, and given that Kevin couldn’t do too much more on the angel tablet until Crowley finished his bit, he was going a bit stir-crazy.

So, he did something that he wouldn’t usually do and sought out Sam.

The first place he looked was in Sam’s room. The door was slightly ajar, so he didn’t feel bad about nudging it open that bit further, though in the end it didn’t matter, as there was no sign of him. The bed was messy, which was a bit weird for someone who was almost militaristic in how neat he kept things, but other than that and the half full glass of water by the bed there was no indication that the room had been occupied recently. So he moved onto the next most likely room – the library. He walked the full length of the room, examining each aisle with no success.

Downstairs was next, where he worked his way through the storerooms and archives furthest away from Crowley’s dungeon and gradually getting closer until finally, he saw a shape in one the rooms. His relief quickly shifted to concern though upon realising that Sam was not in fact upright, nor was he conscious. Kevin approached cautiously, taking in as much as he could. Sam was wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt – his sleepwear effectively – and was close to the front of the room suggesting that he hadn’t gone in for anything other than a brief glance. His pistol was near his right hand with the safety still on so he must have been caught off-guard by whatever it was that took him down.

Given there was no obvious cause for Sam’s lack of consciousness and nothing in the room seemed ready to jump out and attack him, Kevin moved closer to Sam’s prone body. A quick check of the larger man’s airway and scalp confirmed that there were no blockages in his airway or head injuries that may have generated a sudden desire for a nap, so Kevin moved on to trying to wake Sam up.

“Hey! Moron!” he yelled, slapping Sam lightly on his unshaven cheek. He repeated the action a couple of times, getting progressively harder and louder but no response was forthcoming.

Given his lack of success he stopped, a little out of breath but not so much that he couldn’t sigh when a realization hit him.

“Ah crap. You’re going to make me carry you, aren’t you?”

Much huffing and puffing later, Kevin was finally situating Sam on his still unmade bed. Kevin had managed to get the guy upstairs with the assistance of a bedsheet and some dragging, though this may have been with a few (or several) more headknocks than strictly ideal.

Once Sam was on the bed, Kevin dropped onto the desk chair nearby, working to get his breath back. He noticed the small twitches in Sam’s hand and beneath his eyelids that made it clear that there was brain activity. But if he was going to wake up naturally, he would have done it at some point while Kevin was dragging him upstairs – at a minimum, by the sixth time Kevin had dropped him.

So, in absence of any answers, Kevin grabbed the phone and selected Dean from the contacts menu, waiting impatiently for a response.

The phone rang, and rang, and rang again until finally voicemail picked it up.

“_This is Dean’s other _other_ cell, so you know what to do”_.

“Uh Dean, it’s Kevin. I’m still at the Bunker with Sam, but for some reason he’s not waking up. Crowley’s still contained so I don’t know what’s causing it. I’m going to do some research, but call me when you get this. So yeah… uh bye.” Kevin winced as he awkwardly ended the message and hung up the phone.

“Alrighty then. So. What do we know. You’re unconscious, and not waking up. You were in the storeroom for some reason, and if you had your gun, it was probably because you were investigating something. Whatever it was it must have woken you up and drawn you down there?”

Kevin stopped, feeling like he was going in circles. But saying it out loud was helping him, so with a minor interjection of “Damnit Kevin, think!” he took another deep breath and continued.

“Ok. So you were cataloguing down there anyway, so there might be a clue. Something caused you to want to investigate in the middle of the night, so another hint. You’re sleeping – not unconscious – but whatever is causing it, you not going to wake up from anything I do. Dean won’t be able to help until he gets back, but I don’t know how long that’ll be, and I don’t know what this is doing to you in the meantime.”

Another pause, and finally a course of action was crystallising in his mind. “I can’t wait for Dean. You can’t stay asleep. I’m going to go have a look down in the storeroom and see if I missed something. You… just stay put.”

Kevin winced again. “Man, I have got to get better at closing these things off, cause that was weak.” Another wince. “And I also need to stop talking to myself.”

Kevin made his way back towards the storeroom. Flicking on the light, he glanced briefly around the room to regain his bearings. Sam had been the one to spend all his time in these forgotten rooms, cataloguing the items and making labels with names as he found them, and danger levels when he could so it took some time to figure out where to start. He moved through the shelves, noting that the labels had also been marked with dates and reference numbers – presumably correlating with journal entries or some sort of guide, but Kevin would have to go back to the library to find out for sure. Thankfully the fact that the dates were included made it obvious where Sam had stopped.

Of the items that Sam had catalogued two days beforehand, there were several jars with dubious contents, a few boxes with markings (and one of the first things Sam had drummed into him when he arrived at the Bunker was do not open anything without knowing what it was – with a whole subsection on Suspicious Boxes and Why We Don’t Touch Them), and some frankly concerning trays with some herbs and a couple of bones. Nothing stood out as being out of place or knocked over which ruled out misadventure, and the labels didn’t really give much guidance on whether any of the arcana could have caused a coma.

Which meant that Kevin was unlikely to get any answers down here and would instead be going upstairs to the library for research. Because he didn’t do enough of that already.

“Damnit Sam, you better appreciate this when you wake up again.”

Several minutes later, Kevin was situated in the library with the list of catalogued items, their respective cards and any reference guides listed on their labels. Kevin whistled in awe a little at the cards as he flicked through them. He was surprised at the level of detail and careful research contained in every card, and noted that though the handwriting could be better, everything in it was clear and easy to understand.

“Gotta admit Sam, was not expecting this from you.” And with that final comment, he dove into the books.

After a couple of hours of solid reading, Kevin finally seemed to stumble on something which might explain Sam’s sudden foray into Dreamland.

“A creature which preys on pain, loneliness and despair, sending its victims into catatonia as it feasts on their worst memories. Few instances have been recorded, so relatively unknown how to fight them. The only known case of someone waking up from one of these attacks, they reported having felt consumed by blackness before falling into their worst memories and were only able to combat it from within their own dreams.” Kevin glanced again at the title included on Sam’s card, chuckling slightly at the ‘DEMENTOR’ written at the top.

Kevin skimmed through some of the other cards hoping to find a cure but was brought up short when he read one about “African Dream Root”. Glancing back at the book where it indicated that it was possible for someone to break free from the Dementor’s hold from the inside, a plan started forming.

As it turns out, between the Bunker’s storerooms and kitchen there were in fact all the ingredients necessary to prepare the tea. Once the base recipe was done, Kevin took the disgustingly yellow drink to Sam’s room, where he returned to his post at the desk. Plucking a hair from Sam’s head, he stirred it into the drink.

“God, you are going to owe me so much after this.” Kevin lifted the glass to his lips and drunk, placing the cup onto the desk. He leaned forward, nestling his head into the crook of his folded arms and gave himself over to his everpresent fatigue.

His first assumption when he came to was that it hadn’t worked. He could see Sam’s hunched over figure in its usual station at the central table in the library, familiar figure hunched over an aged tome and scribbling notes. However, this was quickly offset by the shelves stretching far into the distance fading into blackness with no visible end.

“Sam?”

Sam glanced up at his name, as casually as ever. “Kev? What’s up?”

Kevin stepped forward, seating himself at the desk across from Sam. He hadn’t really thought about how he’d explain all of this to Sam, but he figured he may as well just dive right in.

“This may sound weird, but we’re currently in your head.”

Sam sat up straight from his bent over pose before leaning back into his chair, looking around with new eyes, taking in the vastness of the room.

He blinked, taken aback momentarily before speaking. “Okay. So why are you here then?”

“Seriously? Just another Wednesday for you then?”

Sam lifted an eyebrow with a wry half-smile. “Not the first time we’ve used African Dream Root.”

“What even are your lives…” Kevin was a bit flustered. He was expecting there to be way more denial, argument, whatever. Not just ‘Okay’.

“We’ve learnt to just go with it. But still. What’s up?”

“Right,” he shook his head, trying to get his head on straight for his explanation.

Deep breath. “Right. So it’s been a couple of days since that whole thing with Crowley, and at some point in those couple of days you fell asleep and haven’t woken up. I was going through the items in the catalogue and the only one that seemed to make sense was the Dementor…”

Sam was nodding along from halfway through the explanation, standing and grabbing the card and reference guide Kevin had been looking at in the real Bunker earlier that day and bringing it back to the table. “The whole book won’t be the same but because I was reading this right before I got Kissed I should remember enough of this to be useful. I assume you looked at these?”

Kevin nodded.

“What about the journal?”

Kevin frowned. “Journal?”

Sam stood once more, bringing a worn leather journal marked ‘R. Galbraith’ with him from the dedicated shelf.

“This is the journal from the Man of Letters who investigated the attack. There’s a reasonably thorough interview with the vic – Solomon? Not sure if that’s a first name or a last name. Anyway, Solomon hadn’t realised something was wrong initially – just a sense of cold and some whispers, and then a sensation of being blanketed in darkness. But for some reason while he was trapped by the creature he became self-aware enough to realise it was a dream and that he couldn’t wake up. So he went deeper and deeper into the memories, until eventually he found it barricaded in his self-described worst memory. Solomon described it as a formless, shapeless figure buried within his memories, observable only as the complete absence of light with branches reaching into the memory itself, barbed and terrible. These tethers were strong and fought any attempt to remove them, but once they were gone, the darkness faded and he woke up.” Sam shut the journal, standing and reaching the door in a couple of long strides, gesturing for Kevin to follow.

Kevin blinked. Sam was tall and all, but he shouldn’t have been able to cover the room that quickly, and when they left the library they were immediately in the store room – a storeroom that in the real world was one floor down and several corridors across.

“I remembered that account when I was cataloguing this room, and I thought the sample collected later on matched the description closely enough to be catalogued together.”

“Hang on!” Kevin interjected the moment Sam paused for breath. “How is this happening – we shouldn’t have been able to go straight from the library to here-“

“Not in the real world, no. This is a dream world – my dream world. You might have a little control over it too because you took the dream root, but because of my… unique experiences… I have a level of control in here that you probably won’t be able to match. Anyway. That control means that this doesn’t follow real world rules. So if I want the next room we go into to be the storeroom we need…”

“Then all you have to do it think and it happens. That is so cool.”

Sam smiled at Kevin’s enthusiasm. “Yeah, it’s pretty cool.” He picked up a jar. “This is where the sample was – it was just a cloud of black smoke when I saw it, but I remember now that that night I heard whispering coming from this direction. Because Crowley was down here too I wasn’t going to leave it to chance, but obviously something I did was enough to… I don’t know, activate the thing and it attacked me.”

“And based on the journal entry, we now have to find your deepest, darkest memories to find the Dementor and remove its tethers.”

“Well, yeah. But from I read I got a sense that it’s not necessarily the worst memories that it attaches itself to. I think it’s any memory that has pain, loneliness or despair, and if it’s trying to hide, then it might not necessarily be the memory you expect it to be.”

“So it forces you to take a trip down memory lane. Pretty good self-defence mechanism.”

“I’ll say. Okay, Kevin,” Sam clapped a hand on Kevin’s shoulder. “Thanks for giving me the heads up, but you should probably wake up now. I don’t know how long this is going to take, and you really don’t want to see-“ Sam trailed off.

“I’m not going.”

“Kevin…”

“Look Sam, we don’t know what this Dementor is going to be like when we get there, we don’t know how we’re going to break its tethers so me being here might be the difference between you waking up and not. Especially when you factor in the Dream Root, if it gives me that extra level of control. Anyway, I don’t even know how to wake up.”

Sam sighed in exasperation. “I’ll give you the first two, but getting out of here is easy.”

“And you won’t have to be the person to explain to Dean why I left you behind if you don’t wake up.”

Sam’s sigh was less exasperation and more defeat. “Fine. But this is not going to be pleasant, and if I tell you you have to leave, you do it, no questions. Got it?”

Kevin nodded. “Got it.”

“So how do we drive this puppy?”

“It’s pretty easy. I can make the door be anything I want it to be. The problem right now is trying to figure out where the Dementor would be hiding.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, if it’s attracted to pain, loneliness and despair, it couldn’t have picked a better person.”

Sam saw the look of doubt on Kevin’s face. “Never mind, I suppose you’ll see soon enough.”

Sam closed his eyes briefly. There was a flare of light on the other side of the door, and Sam gestured to it. “Let’s do this.”

Kevin opened the door, not sure what to expect. But whatever it was that he was expecting, it wasn’t what he got.

“Seriously, how old are you? And were you ever that short?”

The kid in front of him chuckled, voice high with youth. “That’s the first thing you ask?”

Kevin was taken aback. “Wait, what?”

The kid raised his eyebrows, expression pure unadulterated bitchface. “Dude, we’re in my memories. This is where I was when this happened to me, so this is where I’m going to be when they happen. Just roll with it.”

As much as Kevin wished he could freak out about it, it wasn’t the weirdest thing that had happened to him so far today, let alone since his forceful induction into the supernatural underworld. With effort, he shrugged it off and spoke as nonchalantly as he could manage. “Whatever. I’m still trying to figure out how this-“ Kevin gestured to the tiny kid with too much hair in the sleazy motel room they just entered. “turns into that” he finished lamely, gesturing at the door behind him as if to indicate to the Sam they’d left behind.

Sam just shook his head before answering the actual question. “I’m eight, just about to turn nine. Dean hasn’t quite turned thirteen yet.”

“And why this memory?”

“This was the first hunt our Dad went on after I found out about the supernatural.”

Kevin rocked back on his heels. He knew that the Winchesters had to have known about this stuff young, but he hadn’t expected that young. “So you were eight when you were dumped in this crapshoot of a life?”

Sam chuckled again, this one missing the previous warmth and far too hollow to be coming from an eight-year-old’s throat. “I may have only found out about the supernatural when I was eight, but I’d been living the life since I was six months old.” He paused, continuing before Kevin could ask the question on the tip of his tongue.

“Our mom was killed by a demon before I was even one, and Dean was four. Dad hadn’t known about the supernatural so his was a literal trial by fire – he found out by seeing his wife burn on the ceiling of my nursery. That was when he started hunting.”

“And that’s him?” Kevin asked, gesturing to the shadow of the man in the door talking to Dean, ignorant of Sam’s conversation with Kevin.

“Yeah. He’d left before, but this was the first time I really felt scared he wouldn’t come back.”

Kevin wandered over a bit closer to the man and Dean.

“You know the deal, Dean. Don’t leave the room unless you have to, make sure all the doors and windows are salted-“

“Make sure the shotgun’s loaded and look out for Sammy. I got it, Dad.”

The man in the doorframe smiled, ruffling the kid’s hair. “Good man. I’ll call you when I’m on my way back.”

“Ok, Dad.”

Dean stood in the doorway as the man walked away and until the growl of the Impala had fully faded away.

Kevin turned back to Sam.

“How long was he away for?”

“This time-“ Sam breathed deeply, searching his memories for this particular hunt. “This time I think it’s about a week, maybe eight days. It’s a black dog in Arizona and when he gets back he’ll have a couple of gashes but otherwise be okay.”

Kevin looked around the room, seeing the salt, the sigils, the shotgun in the corner and the fast food containers in the trash. He couldn’t see anything out of place but he wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for. He said as much to Sam.

Sam hummed briefly in agreement. “I don’t think it’s here – it all looks pretty much as I remember,” he said, sharp eyes taking in the room again. “And if it’s not here, it probably won’t be in any adjacent memories. I get the feeling we’ll know what we’re looking at the moment we see it. Let’s get going.”

Sam headed towards the motel door first, light flaring brightly behind and around it as they approached. He glanced briefly behind him to make sure Kevin was following.

Kevin however lingered in the room. As Sam had walked away, deviating from the memory a new Sam had formed in his place. Kevin stared at both boys, trying to see the men he knew in them. After a couple of seconds he turned away, not sure what to make of it.

The next memory couldn’t have been too much longer after the first. Sam looked much the same age as he had previously, with perhaps a few extra months.

Sam didn’t even bother looking up at Kevin before answering the inevitable question. “I’m nine, Dean thirteen. This was the first time they left me on their own to go on a hunt – this time a salt and burn in Oregon. Dean was so happy cause he got out of school early to go with Dad.”

Kevin paused for a moment to take that in and decided to skip over the obvious questions and instead jumping straight to something he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to. “So where did you guys go between hunts?”

Sam shifted his focus from the homework he had been focusing on in his memory to Kevin entirely, old eyes in a young face eerily intent when he responded. “There was no in-between. We just moved from place to place, following the trail. Sometimes we’d stay somewhere a couple of months; other times it would only be a few days.” Sam’s eyes moved back to the paper and notebook in front of him.

Kevin didn’t speak, not sure what he could ask after that.

Sam was still tiny, eyes hidden behind bangs as he read his book at the dining room table. It looked like a math book and every once in a while Sam would lift his pencil to scratch an answer onto the sheet beside him.

“So why this memory?”

“We’re looking for memories drenched in pain, despair and loneliness.”

He was interrupted by laughter filtering through the partially open window. Sam glanced wistfully towards the sound before continuing.

“If that’s what we’re after, this is a pretty decent place to start.”

Kevin didn’t know how to respond, instead running his eyes over the room again with a growing sense of sadness for the boy in front of him and the man he knew. This motel room wasn’t significantly different from the last – still two beds, garish wallpaper and some questionable stains in the well-worn carpet. It was impersonal and he could easily see how empty it would have felt with its solitary occupant, the only noise being the soft scratches of pencil on paper and those rare sounds filtering in from the outside.

Sam breathed out heavily once more, before putting down his pencil and standing. As before, a shadow was left to continue the memory while they left the room though no words were used to confirm the absence of any tethers.

Kevin followed Sam, reflecting on the child they were leaving behind, though he almost stopped as he was hit by a realisation. These memories were meant to be extremely painful to the people experiencing them, but if it hadn’t been for Sam’s explanation, Kevin wouldn’t have known anything was wrong. He wished he could entertain the notion that maybe Sam’s definition of painful memories was lacking, because maybe then that seed of resentment for being abandoned he still nursed, just a little, could be vindicated. But he knew that with everything Sam had gone through in the Trials alone that couldn’t be true. So instead he was left with a worrying thought – was he simply that bad at picking up the undertones of pain from Sam? Or was Sam simply that good at hiding them?

The next door took them straight into darkness. As his eyes adjusted, Kevin could start to recognise they were in a forest and could make out a few shapes. Everything was thrown into sharp relief though when they entered a clearing, faces lit by the full moon shining overhead. Both Sam and Dean were evidently much older, but their dad didn’t seem to have changed much. Maybe a little salt in the hair and beard, a little thicker around the middle.

Dean was practically his older self – he was as tall and strong now as he would be in future, though with less stubble and an unfamiliar exuberance. Sam in contrast was still miles away from his adult self. Still short and slim (though depressingly enough he had caught up to Kevin by a fair amount), hair in his eyes and backpack way too big for him. The gun in his hand looked like he was born with it, and Kevin could easily see hints of the hunter he would become.

The visually younger man looked up and caught his eye. “Werewolf hunt in Montana. I’m fourteen, Dean’s eighteen. It’s the summer before I start high school.”

Kevin nodded, unwilling to speak and break the eerie silence of the forest around him. He did however follow the three shadowy figures, grateful that he was only a memory given how much noise he was making.

Until suddenly, they stopped in another small clearing. Their dad gestured to Dean, Dean breaking off at the unspoken cue and moving further into the dark trees. Another gesture from the older man and Sam was moving in the opposite direction, while their father stayed stock still, head cocked and listening intently. Kevin held his breath trying to hear what the hunters had but he was still caught off-guard as something leaped from the trees in front. It was inhumanly fast, covering the ground between it and the Winchester patriarch faster than Kevin could follow.

Winchester brought up left hand and wrapped it around the figure’s throat, taking a few quick steps and shifting his weight until the creature was trapped against his chest, head held up and away from his captor’s throat in the crook of Winchester’s elbow. Now relatively stationary, Kevin could see the glinting yellow eyes and sharp teeth that he assumed marked it as a werewolf. Winchester was struggling to hold it still, struggling to keep its snapping teeth away from any vulnerable skin and fighting to get his right hand and the pistol it held behind the creature’s heart so he could put it down. But in that struggle, something shifted and suddenly the werewolf was free and Winchester was on the ground.

Dean re-entered the clearing from his position ahead and to the right of Winchester’s position, flanking the werewolf and cutting off its most obvious escape route. Dean raised his pistol slightly to the right, accounting for the werewolf’s expected change in direction. But instead of a change in direction, the creature was skidding against the loose soil, momentum frustrating its efforts at escape until it gracelessly slammed into Dean. Both Dean and the werewolf were caught off-guard, but thick claws dug into Dean’s shoulder, ripping down and out before Dean could bring the gun up for a chest shot. A shout of agony and the werewolf was on its way, this time back the way it came.

Before it could reach the treeline and safety, Sam reappeared. The angle was hard – Sam had exited the clearing to the left, meaning that to make a chest shot was going to require aiming past the creature’s pumping arms before it could disappear into darkness, its urgency propelling it through the clearing at ridiculous speeds. Kevin watched with bated breath, time almost slowing down as Sam raised the pistol. Sam breathed in deeply, squeezed and a loud shot reverberated through the clearing. Microseconds later, the werewolf collapsed forward to the ground. Sam raced over and flipped it over just in time to see it transform back to human, glassy green eyes staring up.

Sam rocked back at the confirmation of death, frozen in place until another groan of agony escaped Dean. All was forgotten as he moved to his older brother’s side.

Winchester reached his son’s side microseconds ahead of Sam, starting to unbutton Dean’s jacket shirt, pulling it over the wound. He glanced up at Sam’s arrival, asking with one word “Werewolf?”

Sam nodded, “Dead.”

Winchester returned the nod and no further words were spoken as they ripped whatever material they had to hand to come up with a field dressing for Dean. Once the bleeding was contained, Sam grabbed the guns, shoving them into his backpack as Winchester lifted his injured son. Kevin followed as they moved toward what he assumed was the car – an assumption proven correct as the Impala came into view after several minutes of strained movement.

Winchester moved purposefully towards the black car, Sam racing ahead to open the back door where Dean was laid out. Once Dean was belted into place, Sam crawled back out of the car, catching the keys thrown at him at the last second.

“Get that wound cleaned and stitched. I’ll head back and take care of the body.”

Sam opened his mouth as if to argue but after a second shut it again, turning back to the car instead.

Winchester moved off into the forest – though now that they were no longer in it, Kevin could see that it hardly deserved the name. Sam had started the car, and Kevin jumped into the passenger seat, door barely closed before Sam had peeled away from the trees and onto the road.

Once in the car, Kevin finally started to calm down. Although he hadn’t strictly been there, Kevin was still feeling the adrenalin rush and would have been hard pressed to speak at all, let alone ask any questions. Which is why it came as a surprise when Sam broke the silence.

“The werewolf looked like Dean.”

Kevin’s focus shifted to Sam immediately, waiting for further comment. When it wasn’t forthcoming, Kevin commented eloquently “huh?”

Sam looked across the seat to his passenger before returning his attention back to the road. “You’re eventually going to want to know why this hunt. It’s because the werewolf looked like Dean. And all I could see once I realised that was the family he could be leaving behind, the people who would never know what happened to him, a brother who’d never know why he lost what he lost.”

“I was terrified the first time, driving back to the motel, that Dean would die. We’ll get back to the motel, and I’ll pull the dressing away and look at Dean’s shoulder and wonder how he’s still alive. And while I fight to make sure that Dean gets out of this, that Dean survives and I get to keep my brother, I’ll wonder why I should get to keep my brother when I just took someone else’s Dean away from them.”

Sam continued looking ahead. Kevin didn’t know how to respond – he’d thought that in doing this he’d be able to help Sam, talk to him, empathise with him. But now, having seen only a few memories, he started to realise why Sam had said he’d be better of just waking up. Kevin may have had his life ruined by the hunting world, but he’d never been a hunter. He’d never had to contend with the tough choices that Sam and Dean had to make on a day-to-day basis and probably with half a second’s worth of notice. So while he was starting to appreciate why Sam and Dean could sometimes seem callous, he was also starting to feel singularly useless in this. Sam was going through some of his worst memories, reopening old wounds and dredging up old feelings, and here Kevin was, not even able to respond.

Sam seemed to intuitively know what Kevin was thinking. “Kev, I can do this. You can wake up at any time, and I’ll be okay. You don’t have to stay here for this.”

Kevin stayed silently, weighing up his options, thinking through possibilities in his rapidfire way. But he kept coming back to one conclusion.

“I know I don’t have to do this. But I can’t let you do this alone.” He paused again, weighing his words carefully. “I think I was probably just lucky that the Dementor didn’t get me. But when I think about what it would be like to have to go through this – relive my worst moments, somehow work through them while trying to figure out if they’ve been tainted or somehow made worse… I can’t imagine having to do that, and the thought of having to do it alone is-“ he cut himself off. “Sam, I can’t leave you alone in here. I don’t think even I can explain why I can’t, but I just can’t. So deal with it.”

Sam smiled slightly and they drove on.

Once they arrived at the motel, Sam resumed acting out the memory. He opened the motel door first, before opening the Impala and releasing the seatbelts. Sam tugged under his older brother’s armpits, trying to ignore the noises of distress as it put pressure on the wound on Dean’s upper shoulder.

“Dude, you gotta help me here,” Sam pleaded, waking up his brother enough that as he almost fell out of the car Dean was able to get his feet underneath him. They stumbled into the room where Dean gratefully collapsed onto the bed.

Sam let him, knowing that unconsciousness was the best thing for Dean no matter how awkward it made his job.

He grabbed a bottled of whiskey and the first aid kit, urgently removing the dressings, needle and thread. By this stage he was old hat at stitches, but his fingers still shook. It didn’t matter how often he did this, or how well. It would never be without fear.

But he was also a Winchester, and so he sucked it up and turned his focus to the job at hand. He fought to keep his attention restricted entirely to the job in front of him, refusing to think too heavily about the person he was stitching up or the cost should he do it wrong. Still, he had to catch himself, prevent his mind from dwelling too heavily on the body he left behind, the body that even now his dad was disposing of.

Eventually he was done, the four parallel slashes closed up as well as he could, disinfected with the rotgut whiskey and bandaged with proper gauze this time. And only when it was done and the exhaustion had set in did he allow himself to pull himself away from the horrific memory.

Dean’s shoulder was a trainwreck. Kevin had seen it a little back in the forest, but now with more light and no interference he could see exactly how bad it had been, and why Sam had been so scared. He did his best to stay out of the Sam’s way while he worked, recognising that at that moment Sam was so deep in the memory that he probably wouldn’t have even recognised Kevin had he tried to get his attention.

So in absence of anything else he could do, he watched. He could see the tension in Sam’s shoulders, the nerves in the shaking of his hands. He could see the fear in the twitching of his jaw, and the intruding thoughts every time Sam had to shake his head as if there were flies around his head. It had been hard, in the previous memories, to see why they had numbered among Sam’s worst. This though? Kevin could understand very easily why this one was so hard for Sam, and for the first time in this dreadful journey, he was glad he stayed.

Time continued to pass like this; Sam working frantically to repair Dean’s shoulder the best he could, Kevin waiting quietly to the side. Until finally, Sam put down the suturing kit and sat back, brushing his sweaty hair out of his eyes.

Kevin took that as his cue, and for the first time, approached Sam while he was still the memory, reaching out and putting his hand on the teenager’s shoulder. Sam jumped slightly at first before relaxing and taking the comfort offered. Kevin removed his hand after only a few seconds, but Sam was already more relaxed and looking more like his 30-something year old self rather than the scared 14-year-old he’d been all those years and scant minutes before.

“Fuck Dementors,” Kevin announced into the silence.

Sam smiled –not quite a grin, but it was more of a smile than he’d had for a while, so Kevin took it as a win.

“Fuck Dementors,” Sam concurred.

“So in amongst all this” Kevin gestured absently at nothing in particular “have you seen any of the tethers or the darkness the journal talked about?”

Sam thought to himself, clearly appreciating the opportunity to fall back into the hunt and distance himself from the raw emotions contained in these memories.

But Kevin still couldn’t get over the weirdness that was seeing Sam’s concentration face on a teenager.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember a lot of these memories being so dark, but every time I try to focus on something that feels different… It just almost slips away. Like it’s something I can only see from the corner of my eye.”

Sam pauses and Kevin waits, recognising the need to just think something over before trying to put it into words.

“I think we’re on the right track though. These memories suck, but something about them feels, I don’t know, lighter almost?”

Kevin mulled over that. “Maybe by going through them like this you’re reducing their power over you. So maybe even if the Dementor isn’t in these specific memories, you’re starving it and preventing it from being able to feed on these events?”

Sam nodded along thoughtfully. “As good a theory as any.” He stood with new purpose, moving towards the door. “We should keep going then.”

Kevin followed, feeling firmer in his own purpose for being here.

They walked through the door almost alongside each other. Because of his proximity Kevin actually saw the change Sam underwent this time, the form beside him stretching and broadening. On the other side of the door was a decrepit house. Sam was clearly a few years older – not quite to his adult height but not far off, given he now had an inch or two on both his dad and brother.

“Nyack, New York. I’m eighteen, Dean’s twenty-two. We’ve just come off a hunt in New York City, and I’ve just finished high school.”

Kevin still looked a little confused, but Sam didn’t speak again. Instead, he focused on the memory, tuning in mid-conversation right as the oldest Winchester spoke.

“You know, Sam? If you’re so miserable here, maybe you belong at Stanford after all.”

The room was silent, just for a moment, but Kevin could feel the tension which only escalated as Sam turned accusing eyes onto Dean. “You told him?”

Dean looked affronted, but Kevin could see panic bubbling under the surface as he responded “No.”

Winchester spoke again, preventing any further accusations from Sam. “Think I don’t know what’s going on in my own family? You’ve started to leave a hundred times, Sam… But you always come back. When are you gonna grow a pair and do the job right?”

Kevin could see the effect the words were having on Sam, the youngest Winchester seeming to inflate with self-righteous anger.

Dean made a last-ditch effort to intervene. “Dad. Stop it!”

But there was no derailing this train. Sam strode towards his father, trying to physically crowd him as he responded, “for good?”

Winchester didn’t back down, instead using his bulk to press back as he growled out “You walk out that door, don’t bother coming back.”

Sam didn’t verbally respond, instead picking up his duffel and walking out into the cool night air. Kevin followed, mind reeling from the argument he’d just witnessed.

Dean came barrelling out of the ramshackle house. Kevin barely noticed the words spoken between them, only catching the gist, where Dean was trying to persuade Sam that their father was only doing this for his own good. He could see the hurt between the brothers; Dean, feeling abandoned as his brother fought to walk away, Sam, feeling like Dean was siding with his father over him.

It changed nothing. Sam still walked away, Dean watching as he did so.

They stayed in the memory for now, Kevin walking alongside Sam as he left behind his family.

“You went to Stanford?” Kevin asked. Of all the things that happened back there, it seemed like such a minor point. But it was still the one he got stuck on, because somewhere, very deep down, he was still Kevin Tran in Advanced Placement.

Sam laughed, actually laughed out loud, recognising the absurdity and potentially even the competitive streak driving it.

“Yeah, Stanford.” Sam chuckled again before entering what Kevin was starting to recognise as story-telling mode.

“It became the dream, you know? My shot at getting out of the hunting. I grew up wanting nothing more than to be normal; to be _safe_. Instead I got dragged all over the country, being raised as a soldier in a three-man army. But right after that werewolf hunt, the one where I realised that we weren’t just hunting monsters but people… someone asked me the question of whether it was something I actually wanted to do, wanted to be. And I realised, no. I hate hunting, I hate being the person who had to stitch my family back together, the isolation, the pain. College was an opportunity for me to get out, and I took it.” He snorted. “A full ride to Stanford, and Dad isn’t proud of me, doesn’t support me. No, I’m the freak who when they get accepted to one of the best colleges in the country, they get kicked out for wanting to go.”

“But… Stanford…”

Sam just smiled again, amused by Kevin’s response. Admittedly Kevin was more than a little bit gobsmacked but decided that after the toll the previous memories had taken, and given the bitterness underlying Sam’s final comment, maybe he just needed someone to recognise the achievement for what it was. If that was what Sam needed, then Kevin was happy to oblige - a task made even easier by the fact that right now, Sam looked the same age as him.

“You seriously got into Stanford, with a full scholarship, while having a secret life as a hunter and dealing with all the crazy supernatural shit as well?”

“And changing schools every month or two.”

“I reiterate; how the fuck did you manage that?”

Sam smiled broadly with a slightly mischievous glint in his eyes. “If you think about it, most high schools are pretty much the same – similar sort of reading list, similar curricula for the sciences and maths, and they always cover the same topics in history, and it’s easy enough to bullshit your way through the social sciences. For my freshman year, every school we went to I asked for all four years’ syllabuses, compiled them and figured out the redundancies, and basically created my own super curriculum that I followed at my own pace. It was a bit chaotic the first year, but I spent as much time on my summer break between freshman and sophomore year working ahead so by the time I actually started the next school year I would never be behind. And then I used my self-developed curriculum as evidence in my application essay to ‘demonstrate my dedication to learning’ or some such crap.”

“I’d accuse you of cheating, but that sounds like way more work than I ever had to do to maintain a 4.0.”

Sam shrugged. “It was more work, but if you want to maintain a perfect GPA despite attending 46 different high schools…”

Kevin almost yelped. “46?”

“I think my transcript became a bit of an urban legend in the Admissions office at Stanford.”

“Still… Stanford.” Kevin could hear the wistfulness creeping into his tone.

Sam heard it, responding with “when we get back, maybe we can sit down and figure out a way to get you into Princeton.”

“There’s no getting out, no going civilian, remember?”

“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up everything for the life.” Sam clapped a hand on Kevin’s shoulder. “Maybe we’ll be able to find a compromise for you.”

Kevin tried to wipe at his eyes unobtrusively. When he saw Sam looking at him out of the side of his eye, Kevin said loudly “can we get off this dusty-ass road already.”

Sam kindly obliged without saying anything further.

The next memory, the two of them walked through massive auditorium doors. Kevin immediately knew that they were at Stanford – Sam looked the same age, though a little more tired, and a little more roadwear. That, plus the bustling crowd and red, grey and white memorabilia were dead giveaways.

Kevin could see something different though. Though the taller man’s excitement was palpable, it was edgier than back at the house. There was a wariness surrounding him, and Kevin could see the way he seemed to startle at anything louder than a conversational tone.

Sam seemed to put that aside for a second to speak to Kevin. “Kev, welcome to the Stanford orientation for the class of 2005.” Kevin smiled back, recognising the gesture for what it was.

Sam headed over to the registration desk, giving his name to the chirpy upperclassman manning the table. With dizzying speed she gave him a name badge, pack and pointed him to his orientation group.

As he headed towards the group, he explained a bit more to Kevin. “I’d been in Palo Alto for a few days by this point – I left NY about a week ago and bussed across. I was just lucky that the timing lined up enough that I could move into the dorms straight away.”

The rest of the day passed uneventfully in a blur of campus tours, small talk and banal ice-breaking activities, at least until the final hour or so.

Sam had left the group briefly, the leader having given them a five minute bathroom break. Thankfully they weren’t required to live out the memory exactly and instead just walked to the bathroom and back. Kevin wondered what the purpose of this was, until they reached the group again and he heard some of the comments from the other students.

“He has to be exaggerating though, right? I don’t think it’s possible to go to that many schools in that short a period, and even if he did, how could you get into Stanford doing that?” To the speaker’s credit, she seemed genuinely confused and curious. But then one of the other incoming students responded.

“Maybe they’re just doing it out of pity or to meet a quota for poor people. I don’t know of anyone else who would come in here wearing dumpster chic like that.”

Having arrived back at the group just as the final comment was aired, awkwardness settling over the students. There was no doubt that Sam had heard the remarks, but he didn’t bother responding to the comment simply raising a disdainful eyebrow at the speaker before looking expectantly at the orientation leader. The leader coughed, and took the out, deciding to resume the tour. The undercurrent of awkwardness didn’t leave though, and no-one could meet Sam’s eyes.

Sam gestured back to the auditorium doors, white light starting to gather around the edges. Kevin took the cue and waited for the now routine explanation as they made their way to their exit.

“I think this was around the point I realised that the massive freak flag flying over my head was never going to go away. I had come to Stanford with the hopes of being normal, and that illusion lasted all of two days. It was around this time that I decided that if I couldn’t get normal, I’d at least settle for safe. But it was also around this time that I felt like there wasn’t going to be anywhere that I’d ever belong.”

Kevin couldn’t help but ask. “Did it get better?”

“Yeah, it did. Before long I met some people, made some friends, and they taught me that normal is overrated. I don’t know what they’d do with our particular brand of crazy, but they didn’t care about the second-hand clothes or the scars or the wishy-washy history I’d give them. Stanford ended up being different than I expected, definitely, but not worse.”

With that, they reached the doors.

And on the other side, found the bunker library.

Kevin blinked, not expecting that at all. Sam was still right next to him and though it was almost weird to see the normal Sam after spending all this time with the younger versions, he voiced his question.

“Why are we back here already?”

Sam shook his head, hair falling into his eyes. “We’re about to get into the really crazy stuff, and I needed a breather.”

“And none of that could be considered ‘crazy stuff’?” Kevin asked in disbelief.

“Not compared to what’s coming.”

Kevin’s stomach sank.

They walked towards the library entryway, Kevin looking warily at Sam’s face. It looked like he was walking to his execution, a far cry from those moments of laughter in some of the previous memories. The light filled the doorway blinding Kevin as they approached. Within moments they were on the other side, Kevin blinking away the residual black spots in his vision.

They were in a hallway in what appeared to be an apartment building. Otherwise there was nothing noteworthy. Sam was a few years older; he’d reached his adult height but not breadth, and the hair was shaggier than Kevin would have ever pictured. He looked like any other college student.

Usually this was the point where Sam would be volunteering his age and location. This time, he barely acknowledged Kevin’s existence. Instead, all of his focus was directed to his feet, seeming to struggle with every step forward. His fingers twitched, halfway towards forming a fist before being released, only to repeat the cycle. There was a jump in Sam’s jaw, his nose was flaring… all the signs Kevin had learnt were indicators of extreme emotion.

And then, they stopped.

The door had an aging number 4 but was otherwise indistinguishable from any of the others in the hallway. Kevin still had no idea what was going on, but could tell from the pause as Sam rested his hand on the doorknob that it was going to be terrible.

Sam twisted the knob and pushed the door open, Kevin following. He was confused – the apartment was completely normal. It was softly lit by a lamp to the side, only slightly illuminating the pictures on the mantle and the feminised décor. Sam approached one of the internal doors with trepidation, stopping only to pick up a cookie, smiling softly at the note. They entered the other room, Kevin still shadowing Sam. His heart his pounding, blood rushing in his ears from anticipation. Something terrible was happening, and the fact that nothing seemed out of place only increased the tension.

Sam collapsed onto the bed, still acting out the memory. He closed his eyes gratefully, breathing slowing from one moment to the next. Kevin had never seen him so relaxed.

And then he jolted, hand reaching up to his forehead. Kevin couldn’t see initially what caused it, only the aftereffects. But when Sam’s eyes snapped open, horror dawning on his face, Kevin could make out the dark red liquid smeared on his face. He tracked Sam’s line of sight, stomach dropping as he saw the figure plastered to the ceiling just in time to see flames roar to life behind her.

Sam had crawled back onto the bed, shouting a name that Kevin couldn’t make out over the crackling of the fire. And then suddenly Dean was there, grabbing his brother and hurrying him out of the room. Kevin remained stationary, unable to move under his own power until he was jolted to life by his feet dragging along the floor of their own volition. Given the choice between falling flat on his face and moving, he started walking under his own power, unable to remain in the room in Sam’s absence.

He caught up to the brothers outside, where words were apparently exchanged and Sam had gained some of the weight that even today was so evident – the weight of the world on his shoulders, to borrow a cliché.

Kevin stayed back, allowing Sam to gain what little comfort was available from his brother beside him. Until finally, as the flames receded and the people dispersed, Sam and Dean moved from their post beside the Impala to behind it, opening the trunk to throw the few items Sam had remaining after the fire in. As the trunk lid was slammed shut, white light overtook the memory and faded into the library.

Sam started pacing, distress evident regardless of the age of the memory. Kevin didn’t say a word, recognising that talking at this stage wasn’t going to help, and more than happy to process the memory in silence himself. He didn’t know who the woman was, or the story behind how she died. But given the vision of Channing’s next twisting to an obscene angle and her body falling away and the way it still seemed to be tattooed to the inside of his eyelids, inescapable and unforgettable… he assumed that what Sam had experienced in that room had never faded, had never fully resolved.

Sam finally stopped pacing.

“Her name was Jess. She had been everything to me – everything I could possibly have wished for, everything that I had hoped for in leaving for Stanford. I loved her, had a ring picked out and a date in mind, and then I got dragged back into this world, and it’s never let me off its hooks since.”

“Kevin, when we say you can never fully get away from this world, it’s not because we’ve never tried. The abyss stares back, and anytime we’ve ever tried to leave, it’s drags us back in. Jess was a casualty of that and she didn’t deserve what happened to her.”

“And after all that, after forcing me to live through that again, the Dementor didn’t even have the decency to be in that memory.”

Sam glanced back at Kevin. “Let’s get this done.”


End file.
